First off, I'm new to hydrogen (so hi) and i'm also new to encoding with command lines. I began looking through hydrogen as i'm about to copy my CD collection, and lame 3.90.3 APS struck me as a good place to start. Except I've run into trouble already. When I encode simply with the line:

the files average at 160 kbps, rather than 190 (based on this post). It seems more like the size you'd encode for a portable, and I was hoping for an improvement on 192 CBR. My soundcard and speakers aren't sensitive enought to differentiate. Is this normal?

IIRC, the bitrates you get from Lame VBR also depend on the type of the music you're encoding, because it optimizes the bitrate based on the complexity of the signal from the track. If it's a piano & vocal track, for example, you may get a lower bitrate compared to something with a lot more instruments and whatnot. But I think the real test is in how the track sounds. I mean, if it's transparent to your ears, shouldn't the lower bitrate and filesize be a good thing?

cheers,
kindofblue

--alt-preset standard being VBR encodes as many or few bits as its needs. If those files sound fine then they're OK. I've had aps give me small files too. The 190 figure comes from averaging a lot of files' bitrates. Some are more, some are less.

If they are not alright and you can ABX a problem then you should post it here and the LAME devs can work on it.

If you are recording modern rock with lots of highs - then you probably have a problem. However, if it is as others mentioned, piano and vocals or acoustic guitar and vocals, then a 160 average could be just fine.

My files range from 150-250 using APS. 210 is the average (heavy on the rock side in my collection)

Cheers for the advice :)
I was recording some sparse hip-hop&soul with just vocals and 1-2 instruments, I can only say that i'm ripping a tool album at this moment :P and we shall see once and for all.

I even got tracks with an average of about 130kbit - unABXable. Since bitrate is not equal to quality, the average bitrate needed to make a track transparent can vary alot. And since APS does target a constant quality, not a constant bitrate, thats absolutely okay.

CBR=constant bitrate, variable quality
VBR=variable bitrate, constant quality

ABR=something in between the above two

- Lyx

Cool all the advice turned out to be true, it's just amazing that all the cd's encoded before turned out to be so small! Anyway cheers again!

Also, hip-hop is often mono-like (having a strong correlation between the two channels) and can therefore be encoded highly efficiently by Joint Stereo, causing a lower than expected bitrate.